


Misguided Secrets

by indigospacehopper



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Anxiety Attacks, John Tries, Love Confessions, M/M, New Year's Eve, Sherlock Whump, mentions of Sherlock whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-30
Updated: 2019-12-30
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:21:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22038466
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/indigospacehopper/pseuds/indigospacehopper
Summary: “You know I’d never lie to you. I merely failed to tell you the whole truth.”John snorted, and Sherlock smirked slightly.“The whole truth.”They’d been through too much together to resort to lying now. Neither of them would stoop low enough. Both of them knew what lying would do to the other. Neither of them had a secret too horrendous to not tell one another. Not anymore. There were no more secrets between them; John had been at the receiving end of far too many lies to stomach anymore.—Or, John realised how much Sherlock has been hurting
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Comments: 12
Kudos: 124





	Misguided Secrets

“But you weren’t telling the truth.”

Grey clouds clung to the sky as planes cut through them on their descent to Heathrow airport. John watched Sherlock with fixed interest, waiting for an answer.

“I didn’t lie,” Sherlock said, watching an aeroplane as it disappeared into a dark grey blockade of cloud. “It was a misguided truth.” 

John rolled his eyes. “So, it was a lie,” he said. “A misguided truth is a lie, Sherlock.”

“It’s not and it wasn’t. You know I’d never lie to you. I merely failed to tell you the whole truth.”

John snorted, and Sherlock smirked slightly. 

“The whole truth.”

They’d been through too much together to resort to lying now. Neither of them would stoop low enough. Both of them knew what lying would do to the other. Neither of them had a secret too horrendous to not tell one another. Not anymore. There were no more secrets between them; John had been at the receiving end of far too many lies to stomach anymore. 

Sherlock’s survival, for instance. Mary’s background. Mary’s continuation of that background. Mary shooting Sherlock. Mary’s willingness to let John mourn all over again. Her attempt to let John mourn all over again. He’d come to terms with her death now, but if she were to waltz in through the front door and begin demanding custody of Rosie he wouldn’t be anywhere near as surprised as any sane person ought to be. 

John supposed he had Sherlock to thank for that.

Sherlock’s hands were stuffed deep into his pockets and his cheeks burned pink from the December cold, reminding John that he was very much alive as a shiver ran through the detective, the wind picking up. Sherlock’s scarf was drawn a little tighter than usual, and John noticed that he’d chosen the thick woollen one which Rosie had gifted him for Christmas. 

Sherlock was cold a lot more than he let on. John had tried to persuade him to start wearing jumpers more often, his cotton shirts under a tight blazer doing little to keep the in the warmth. The coat helped, but John could see that Sherlock was freezing. 

They’d been asleep when Lestrade’s call came through, and when John had entered Sherlock’s bedroom to rouse him into action for the day he had been surprised to find Sherlock wrapped up, snoring quietly with an electric blanket on. A hot water bottle stuck out the bottom of the duvet, but the bedroom window was wide open. John sighed unplugged the blanket, closed the window, and surveyed Sherlock closely. 

Sherlock was lay on his front, his head nestled between two pillows with only his mouth and nose visible before the rest of his body was concealed with a thick duvet. A few dark curls twisted out from beneath the pillow, and Sherlock shuffled occasionally, still snoring quietly. 

He’d looked calm. Peaceful. And as he shifted John saw Sherlock’s eyelids flutter as he dreamed and John’s heart warmed a little. 

Sherlock often described his brain as a hard-drive. A machine. The component of a robot. John knew that Sherlock wasn’t a machine, though sometimes the reminder was appreciated. To see Sherlock dreaming humanised him slightly. But of course he knew that Sherlock was human. Of course he knew.

He remembered Sherlock lying on the cold wet slabs of the pavement outside St Bart’s, his hair thick with rain and blood and John’s stomach churned as he too fell back onto the same pavement. Still alive but slowly dying.

“No. No. God, no.”

He remembered the reports Mycroft had allowed him to view once at the Diogenes Club. 

Sherlock had woken up one day in a cold sweat and heart palpitations. Mrs Hudson had phoned John to tell him that Sherlock was having a suspected heart attack, and that he should meet them at the hospital as soon as possible because Sherlock was weakly vomiting and the paramedics were on their way and it was the furthest John had ever felt from his practice because how could Sherlock be having a heart attack? How could he have not seen that Sherlock was at risk of one? 

“Anxiety attack,” the paramedic had told John afterwards. The paramedics had decided against taking Sherlock to hospital, but they’d given him a blanket. He was hunched on the sofa, sipping a steaming mug of tea which Mrs Hudson forced into his hands. “And a bad anxiety attack at that. His heart is fine, but it might be worth getting him on some medication.”

John had nodded and texted Mycroft. 

Mycroft agreed to meet him that afternoon.

“Undercover operation in Russia which went wrong,” Mycroft told John as he poured himself a cup of tea from a China pot. “Extraction wasn’t an option. The British government interfering would have been enough to start another war. Sherlock…” Mycroft’s voice cracked a little from its normal concrete hardiness. “Sherlock spent four months being, er, questioned. He’s still got the scars.”

John’s stomach lurched.

“Scars? He never told me.”

“Why would he?” Mycroft asked, a little humour edging into his voice as he looked up at John. “The man won’t even see a therapist, why do you think he’d tell you?”

Mycroft had gone in to tell Sherlock to get out. He recalled to John seeing Sherlock’s long, matted, curly hair. Remembered Sherlock chained to the wall, bent over uncomfortably with weak knees and blood struggling to dry in the dampness of the room. The guards wore fur. Sherlock only wore trousers. John had seen the pictures. The medical practitioner in him yearned to help, but he was forced to remind himself that Sherlock was no longer in that state. He was being force-fed cakes by Mrs Hudson, the adoptive maternal figure playing nurse to her distressed, and now very grumpy and embarrassed, son. 

Sherlock would never talk to them about the anxiety attack. John found the blanket in the bin the following day. 

“You can talk to me, you know,” John said later that evening. They sat in front of the fire, Sherlock plucking at the strings of his violin. Rosie was asleep upstairs.

“Can I? That’s good to know,” Sherlock said absent-mindedly. 

John sighed. 

“I mean it, Sherlock. I realised that I never… that I never asked you what happened.”

“I don’t want you to ask what happened,” Sherlock replied. “I’m not weak.”

“I didn’t say you were.”

“But you’ve spoken to Mycroft,” Sherlock stated, finally meeting John’s gaze. “You know what happened.”

“I know what I read in a dossier,” John replied quietly. “I don’t know what happened to you.”

“And I don’t want to talk about it,” Sherlock snapped, growing more agitated. More defensive. “You didn’t care before and you don’t care now. I think Rosie’s awake.”

Sherlock stood and marched upstairs to Rosie’s room. 

“Hey.” John heard him whisper. “Bad dream? That’s okay…”

John turned the electric blanket back on. 

John wondered briefly what Sherlock dreamt about now, wrapped up in the warmth. He wanted to crawl under the duvet and hold him close. Apologise. Promise him that he would never be cold again and let his own body heat keep Sherlock warm. Show him that he did care. Prove it to him. 

He hoped Sherlock had remembered that John cared for him while he was prisoner, then tried to remember the last time he’d told Sherlock that. If he’d ever told him that. 

Rosie tugged John’s pyjama sleeve.

“Daddy,” she whispered, eyes bleary from sleep. “Is it school today?”

John scooped her up in his arms. 

“Not today, sunshine,” he said, pecking her lightly on the cheek as she wrapped her arms around him and rested her head on his shoulder. “Still another week.”

Rosie yawned.

“Pops.” 

She caught a glimpse of Sherlock beneath his duvet and reached out her small hands for him. John obeyed and lay her down next to the sleeping detective, who stirred and enveloped John’s daughter with the duvet. 

“Hm.” Sherlock grumbled. “Morning, sunshine.”

Rosie smiled and fell back to sleep. Sherlock opened one eye and looked up at John. 

“Stop smiling. It’s too early,” Sherlock mumbled, closing his eye again. “And don’t ever turn my blanket off again.”

But John’s heart was swelling with so much love for the bond his daughter and his best friend shared that he barely heard what Sherlock said. 

Sherlock and Rosie’s relationship wasn’t awkward, and it wasn’t forced. Rosie doted on Sherlock and Sherlock had swept Rosie into his whirlwind of a life with surprising ease. John had been quite taken aback to find how much Sherlock cared for Rosie.

“He’s always cared for her,” Mrs Hudson told him one evening as he helped her take out the bins. “But it wasn’t easy for him. But oh, you know.”

John had taken that to mean that Sherlock struggled to come to terms with feeling something towards another person, and it had been funny to see Sherlock hold Rosie as arms length the first time they met. 

Rosie was barely a year old when John had moved back into Baker Street. He’d taken his old room on the top floor, but there were two other rooms up there in which Sherlock had shoved everything he’d ever owned. A mass clean-up began, but with Mrs Hudson’s permission to decorate Sherlock and John had taken a week off and soon enough they had the created perfect space for Rosie to spend her fast-approaching toddler years. 

John had enjoyed moving back into Baker Street. It was better. It was safer. 

Sherlock had always taken a keen interest in Rosie. He played with her, even as a baby. He read her bedtime stories. Once, when she was very little and Mary was out for the night with her friends, John listened to Sherlock singing her a soft lullaby. 

“Oh why is heaven built so far, oh why is earth set so remote? I cannot reach the nearest star, that hangs afloat. I would not care to reach the moon,   
one round monotonous of change; yet even she repeats her tune beyond my range. I never watch the scatter'd fire of stars, or sun's far-trailing train, but all my heart is one desire, and all in vain: for I am bound with fleshly bands. Joy, beauty, lie beyond my scope; I strain my heart, I stretch my hands, and catch at hope.”

John had heard the lullaby several more times after that, but it was only when he was eavesdropping, hanging behind the door.

“Sing De.” John remembered Rosie saying excitedly on one such occasion, the eve before her third birthday. “Sing De!”

Sherlock chuckled quietly. “Okay, but don’t tell your daddy, you should be asleep! And we wouldn’t want to - John.”

John was too wrapped up in the memory to hear the present-day Sherlock saying his name. 

“John? John.”

Sherlock stepped on his foot. 

“John!”

“Ouch! What was that for?” John huffed, glaring up at Sherlock. 

“Pay attention when I talk to you!” Sherlock snapped, though he was smiling. “Everything I have to say is of the upmost importance.”

John scoffed and prepared to listen. 

They stood on the corner of Mall Road in Hammersmith, the blunted knife edge of Central London. A police cordon blocking the lower portion of the street which backed onto the Thames. 

The Thames churned beneath the cracking and crumbling Hammersmith Bridge, which disgruntled morning commuters marched across in drones towards the nearby Underground station, annoyed that they were forced to work in the time between Christmas and New Year’s.

“Why’re we here, Sherlock?” John asked. “Lestrade didn’t say -“

“All will be revealed in due course,” Sherlock replied. “Anyway, we need to talk.”

“About the fact that you said...?”

“Not about that. About something else.”

Sherlock shifted his weight from one foot to the other. His curls jostled in the wind and he pressed his nose into his scarf. 

“About what, Sherlock?” John asked. “Because last time you said that we needed to talk....”

“I know.” Sherlock nodded, turning to face him. “But I didn’t lie to you. I just omitted the whole truth.”

John’s stomach jolted.

“Sherlock, you don’t have to do this...” he said. “Not here.” 

Sherlock nodded and closed his eyes, inhaling deeply.

A police car drove past, and Sherlock opened his eyes again. His eyes narrowed as he followed the car, and it pulled up next to a police officer hanging around outside a semi-detached house in the centre of the street. 

The pair of them watched as a police officer pulled out his phone and began to type.

John’s brows furrowed, not moving from the pavement as Sherlock stepped out into the road. 

“That’s Sergeant Rose,” Sherlock said, nodding towards a police officer standing at the farthest end of the street to where they stood. 

Sergeant Donovan stood chatting to a curious resident, hiding behind her front gate in her dressing gown, a steaming mug of tea in her hands. 

“I still don’t quite know-“ John started, but Sherlock cut him off with a curt nod at the police officer, who had stopped typing to take a picture of the house furthest down the street, which leaned on the back of a beer garden. 

“That’s him?” John asked. He stood at Sherlock’s side. The wind rustled the trees standing like soldiers along the edge of the road, and above them another plane furthered it’s descent. 

“That’s him,” Sherlock replied. “Come on.” 

The police officer was a tall man, around 6 foot 2 and incredibly lanky. With a face marred by acne scars and scabs from a bad shave, for a moment John thought that the police officer was a teenager in fancy dress. 

“Sergeant Rose?” Sherlock asked, holding his hand out. “Pleased to meet you, I’m –“

“I know who you are. You’re that crack ‘ed detective what punched the Super.” 

John shuffled.

“I didn’t punch him,” Sherlock clarified. “That was partner, Doctor Watson. And we’re here to talk to you about another matter though please, don’t run. He’s quite excellent with a gun and I assure you a bullet is far faster than you could ever be.”

John’s eyes widened and he looked up at Sherlock, who was resolutely ignoring him. John was a crack shot, but he hardly knew why a gun would be a good idea in this instance. 

“Is that a euphemism?” Sergeant Rose asked, looking between them both.

“It is not,” Sherlock replied. “Now, if you don’t mind. John.”

John took out his trusted notepad and pen and jotted down the date, time, and name. He knew full well that Sherlock didn’t require notes, so if he was directed into making them it meant that Sherlock deemed the case to be worthy of the blog. 

“Where were you in November, 2013?” Sherlock asked. John frowned, as did Sergeant Rose.

“Which day?”

“The bulkiest part. 22nd, if you’re desperate for specifics though it hardly matters.”

Sergeant Rose looked between Sherlock and John. It was a look John had been privy to on many occasions: “Is this man sane?”

“Urm,” Sergeant Rose scratched his head. “I was on holiday in Krakow, with the lads.” He grinned guiltily. “I think. Don’t remember much of the holiday.” He shot a wink at John, which was greeted by John’s stony, unimpressed face. John had definitely had some good times in Poland, but this wasn’t the time or the place to discuss such things. 

“Well, that’s a lie,” Sherlock said bluntly. “Try again.”

Sergeant Rose glared at him. 

“I wasn’t in the country.”

Lestrade was walking over now, two other officers at his side. 

Lestrade had been vague on the phone and all he and Sherlock had talked about in the cab was how to trick Rosie into eating more vegetables.

“Incident at Mall Road, Hammersmith. I know it’s early but we need Sherlock. Bring him over? I can’t say much but he’ll want it. Level 9, I reckon.”

And so John had woken Sherlock, left Rosie with Mrs Hudson, and they’d set off for Hammersmith. 

“And which country were you in, Sergeant Rose? Because we both know it wasn’t Poland.”

Sergeant Rose looked at Lestrade, who had his arms folded across his chest. 

“Answer him, Rose. We already have the records.”

Sergeant Rose turned white. He was surrounded now. John, Sherlock and Lestrade stood directly in front of him, and more officers joining them in an impenetrable circle. 

“Karachi,” Sergeant Rose said quickly. “I was in Karachi. But I don’t see –“

“You were holding a prisoner,” Lestrade said. “You stood outside the cell, every day, for three months.”

John felt Sherlock tense beside him as a second shiver ran through him. No one else seem to notice. 

John pulled a pair of thick woolly gloves from his jacket pocket and pushed them into Sherlock’s hand. The exchange wasn’t witnessed, but Sherlock slipped the gloves on. A second later, Sherlock’s palm was being pushed against John’s and John squeezed Sherlock’s hand gently, barely believing what was happening but he knew that Sherlock wouldn’t have acted if it wasn’t what he needed. 

Everyone was too focused on Sergeant Rose to pay any attention to John holding Sherlock’s hand. 

“Alright,” Sergeant Rose sighed, raising his hands in surrender. “Just arrest me. It’s bloody cold out ‘ere.”

Sherlock gripped John’s hand a bit tighter, taking a deep breath. 

“John,” he whispered. “We should go. Now.”

John nodded and tugged Sherlock closer, trying to ground him a little. 

“Okay, lets go.”

It was only then that John realised that it wasn’t a crime scene at all. Lestrade had been vague because Sherlock would know what was going on. Lestrade had been vague because he thought John would know what was going on. He thought Sherlock would have told him.

Why hadn’t Sherlock told him?

“Sherlock needed to be there to confirm that Sergeant Rose was the man in Karachi,” John thought to himself as he watched Sherlock hail a cab, visibly shaking. John tugged his jumper off and helped Sherlock shrug away the coat. Sherlock pulled the jumper on. It was baggy on him, surprisingly so. He pulled the coat on over it and clambered into the taxi, rubbing his gloved hands in an attempt to warm up. 

“Baker Street,” John told the cab driver, slamming the door. “Sherlock?”

Sherlock was staring at the clear screen dividing the back of the taxi from the front, but John could tell that he wasn’t looking through it. He picked at the gloves and bounced his knee. He visibly shivered and John asked the taxi driver to turn the heating up. John shuffled over so that he was sitting next to Sherlock, their knees touching.

“Hey,” he said, taking Sherlock’s hand again. “Hey. You’re okay. What’s this road called?” 

“It’s the A219, Shepherd’s Bush Road,” Sherlock replied, closing his eyes. “We’ll go along it all the way to the A402, which is Shepherd’s Bush Green.”

John nodded, squeezing Sherlock’s hand gently. He knew that Sherlock was aware of this technique, they’d used it on victims before. 

The fact that Sherlock was aware of the technique and wasn’t criticising John for using it told John how much Sherlock needed it. 

John had never been more scared. 

“Oh yeah? Which road after that?”

“We’ll get on the A3220,” Sherlock said, swallowing thickly. “Urm. West Cross Route, I think. John, I can’t do this. This was a mistake.”

John shook his head. “No, no. Come on. What’s after the A… A3… what was it again?”

“A3220,” Sherlock supplied. “Then it’s the A40. Westway.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

John nodded. 

“And then you follow it around and get to Baker Street,” Sherlock said. “Past The Landmark where you and Mary - I’m sorry, John, I know you’re trying to help but it’s really not –“

John had seen Sherlock cry on three different occasions. Really cry. Not faking it for a case, not when he’d walked into the kitchen while John was cutting onions. But genuine, full blown sobbing. 

The first time was when John had walked in on Sherlock watching cat videos on YouTube. One cat pushed another cat down some stairs and Sherlock was howling with laughter at it, tears streaming down his face as he slapped the table and wheezed.

The second time was before Sherlock jumped. John couldn’t be sure that it was genuine, seeing as Sherlock wasn’t actually about to die, but John felt that the conversation was true. He’d replayed that conversation so many times in his mind, analysed every inch of it. 

“It’s a trick, just a magic trick.”

In the months after Sherlock’s ‘death’ John had allowed himself to believe that this was Sherlock discussing his proficiency in researching people. What Kitty Riley had written down and what hundreds of other reporters had regurgitated. It was a magic trick, Sherlock’s deductive techniques. It wasn’t real. 

Now, he knew that the trick was Sherlock’s ability to survive. A miracle. A miracle that he would come back. He wasn’t gone forever like John originally believed. 

Those were genuine tears because Sherlock was leaving. Sherlock was leaving John behind. 

The third time was the worst John had experienced. 

With a painful twang of guilt he remembered splitting his knuckles on Sherlock’s cheek, pushing him against the wall. Throwing him down. Kicking him, over and over.

Sherlock hadn’t even tried to fight back.

He remembered Sherlock lying there, on the cold morgue floor, bleeding and bruised and blaming himself for it. 

John bowed his head, weighed down with shame.

He’d been escorted out by security, leaving Sherlock on the floor, crying weakly. John had thought it was from the cracked ribs he’d given him, the cut in his mouth as blood mingled with saliva. 

It hadn’t occurred to him that he’d never seen Sherlock cry when he was in physical pain before. 

Sherlock had his head rested on John’s shoulder now, his eyes closed as he breathed heavily, his hand squeezing John’s tightly. 

How could Sherlock trust him so much? A man who had beaten him to a pulp?

John remembered with a lurch throwing Sherlock on the ground the night he’d come back. Head butting him in the kebab shop. 

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, wrapping his free arm around Sherlock and holding him close. “I’m so sorry.”

“What for?” Sherlock asked, his right knee bouncing out of control. He pulled away slightly and looked up at John. “I’m fine, I’m sure I’m just coming down with a cold.”

“You’ve always done everything for me,” John said, ignoring Sherlock’s shit lie. “Always. I’ve never been able to see it until now.”

Snippets of past conversations with friends rushed back to him. 

“How do you survive living with Sherlock?” 

“Don’t you just want to throttle him?”

“You’re a Saint, John. Honestly. I don’t know how you put up with him. I’d have checked him in somewhere by now.”

John looked down at Sherlock. 

“You’ve been through so much.”

“I haven’t.”

“Sherlock, listen to me,” John sighed. “Because I’ve only just realised how selfish I’ve been.”

Sherlock’s eyes widened. “You’ve never been selfish. Shut up.”

“I have. I’m the most selfish. When you jumped off St Bart’s Hospital I was a mess. I mourned my best friend. I didn’t know what I was going to do with myself. I was so lost and so numb and so angry that I didn’t follow you. That I couldn’t follow you. That I wasn’t strong enough to jump off that building immediately after you.”

Sherlock stared at him. “John…” he started quietly, but John shook his head. 

“No, Sherlock. The whole time I thought only of myself. Of how much I hurt. I didn’t think about how awful it was for you, what you had gone through. What had driven you to that-“

“But I didn’t actually commit-“

“But what if you had?” John asked. “What if you had? And then you came back and I hurt you. I was so angry. I was so, so angry, and you were still injured. Mycroft showed me the files. I know the basis. Sherlock, that infection-“

“Don’t,” Sherlock whispered. “Please, don’t.”

“Sherlock, you were in pain,” John half-yelled. Sherlock didn’t flinch. “You were hurting. I didn’t ask how you were, I never once asked. I still haven’t asked. I presumed you were gallivanting off without me and I didn’t think for one second that you would be…” 

Sherlock shook his head.

“John, I don’t want to have this conversation.”

“But we need to.”

“We need to,” Sherlock nodded. “We do. I know we do. But this isn’t the time or the place. We have Rosie now.”

We.

“And you’re not selfish. Not even a little bit. I’m a dick, John. I know I am, but you bring out the best in me and you were hurting too. You had your own problems.”

“I wasn’t hurting when Mary shot you,” John replied. “I hurt when I found out you’d been shot and I hurt a great deal more when I found out who had shot you and I should have left her right then. I should’ve done. It’s my fault.”

Sherlock shook his head, closing his eyes. He was shivering now, and John rubbed his arm. 

“John, don’t do this to yourself,” he said quietly. “Please. We can talk about it later.”

John ignored him. 

“Mary shot you and I stayed with her. You said it was surgery but I read the files, Sherlock. You died on the operating table. She meant to kill you!” 

Sherlock flinched. Visibly. And John shrunk. 

“Oh, god, Sherlock. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry for all of this.”

Sherlock shrugged away from him and leaned against the window, the side of his forehead pressed against it. His knee shook violently and he hugged himself. 

“Sherlock…” John sighed quietly. He rested his hand on Sherlock’s knee and Sherlock jerked away.

“Don’t.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Drop it.”

“Sherlock, this has to be-“

Sherlock squeezed his eyes shut, shaking his head.

“Because she shot you and I forgave her. I stayed married to her. And then she took a bullet for her and I blamed you! I still blamed you! Even though it wasn’t your fault!”

“John…”

“And I pushed you away and Rosie was nearly taken away and I beat you up and I’m so sorry,” John continued, oblivious to Sherlock’s talking or Sherlock sitting up and taking his hands.

“John, no. Don’t do this to yourself. You didn’t know. You didn’t know.”

“But I should’ve known!” John cried out. “I should’ve known! But I didn’t ask!”

“I didn’t want to tell you!” Sherlock yelled. Neither of them gave a second-thought to the slightly startled cab driver in the front. “I didn’t want you to know! Because then you’d feel sorry for me, and I’d be weak, and I couldn’t be who you needed me to be. The moment you found out you lowered your opinion of me. You felt sorry for me. You pitied me. You were careful not to raise your voice and you stopped watching those films with torture. You started tiptoeing around me like I’m some delicate china about to break. Like I’m some damaged thing. I’m not, John. Moriarty and Moriarty’s network didn’t change me. They didn’t change who I am. Yes I have nightmares and yes I should probably see a therapist but that shouldn’t lessen your opinion of me!

“You loved Mary and yes, I did expect you to wait around for me and I was a little bit surprised when the woman you fell in love with turned around and shot me, but you were in love.” Sherlock’s voice quietened as he looked away. “And you do stupid things for the people you love. You forgive them when they shouldn’t be forgiven because there’s still that element of hope which lingers and you yearn for. You forgive them over and over again. You blame yourself for their misfortune.”

John stared at him. 

“Sherlock…” he whispered, realisation sinking in. “You’re not talking about Mary, are you?

Sherlock shook his head.

“No.”

John nodded. “Right,” he said, looking down. Then realisation dawned on him as he looked up. “You weren’t talking about me and Mary,” he said, and Sherlock’s eyes widened, horrified.

“No, but I can explain –“ he began in a rush, until John grabbed the lapels of Sherlock’s coat and pulled him into a searing kiss. Sherlock whimpered against him, taken entirely by surprise as John dragged him closer. Possessive and powerful and desperate. 

Sherlock leaned into him and rolled backwards, John falling with him as Sherlock’s head came to rest on the window and John pushed him against it. 

There was still so much to say. There was still so much to discuss. But actions spoke louder than words.

John pulled away, gasping for breath. He looked guilty.

“God, Sherlock. I’m sorry, that was,” he started, but Sherlock pecked him to shut him up. 

“Be quiet,” Sherlock told him. “And kiss me again.”

John grinned and leaned forwards, and Sherlock beamed stupidly at him until their lips met again.

—

“That’s my jumper,” John said flatly as Sherlock poured the champagne. 

“Yes.” Sherlock nodded. “And?”  
John smiled and shook his head. “It suits you.”

They were stood on the roof of 221B Baker Street, Rosie on John’s shoulders as she squinted into distance, trying to spot any early fireworks. 

“Daddy! There’s one!” She said excitedly, as a pop and a crackle danced across the sky in a sea of red and green sparks. John smiled.

“What time is it?” John asked Sherlock.

“One minute away,” Sherlock replied, sipping his champagne. He handed Rosie a glass of sparkling apple juice. “You look cold.” 

It was a freezing night. Frost was settling on the cars as puddles turned to ice and the mercury in the thermometer dipped below zero, but Sherlock had never felt warmer. 

“3, 2…”

They saw the New Year in with a kiss, closing off the end of the decade with the promise of so many more adventures to come. 

“I love you,” John whispered to Sherlock as the sky lit up with every colour. “I know it’s probably too early to say, but…”

“I love you,” Sherlock replied warmly. “And it’s not too early. Ten years is long enough.”

**Author's Note:**

> Happy New Year! I hope you all have a wonderful 2020 and thank you for reading! 
> 
> \- indigospacehopper


End file.
